From the Secretary/Councilor, Resa Kelly, Winter 2012

To all of those affected by Hurricane Sandy and the recent tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary. Our thoughts go out to all of you

In the fall we conducted our fourth electronic election using the vendor Vote-Now.com. Members of the Division were asked to vote for candidates running for the positions of chair-elect and councilor/alternate councilor via an email with a link to the ballot. Candidate biographies were conveniently accessible on the ballot to help voters gain a better sense of those running for the positions. To accommodate those that prefer or need traditional election procedures, all members had the option to printout their ballot and send it by post. To encourage voter participation, election email reminders were sent to those who had not voted. In addition, postcard reminders were sent to people who did not open their election email. Unfortunately, even with these attempts to entice members to vote, only 27.1% of the Division participated in the election. The graph below shows the number of total votes as they came into the system. A total of 1413 out of 5216 people voted, which was slightly greater than last year when only 1366 people voted; however, the percentage of our members that voted was slightly less.

The question remains, how do we get more of our members to vote in elections?

Election Results In the election Dr. Donald Wink bested Dr. George Kriz for the chair-elect seat. Dr. Melanie Cooper was elected as councilor, while Ms. Sally Mitchell and Dr. MaryKay Orgill were elected as alternate councilors over candidates Dr. Daniel King, Dr. Cheryl Frech and Dr. Carmen Valdez Gauthier. Congratulations to our newly elected officers and thank you to all who ran for the positions.